Heathrow (Third Runway)

As I said in our last debate on Heathrow in November, I have always considered myself a pragmatist on this issue. I try to look at the net environmental benefits or disbenefits of any proposed changes, and, alongside that, to weigh the economic case, which will typically be made in favour of expansion. For the past 11 years or so—for as long as I have been an elected politician in west London—that has been my position. I am not necessarily against the expansion of Heathrow, but I am absolutely set against this particular proposal for expansion. We need to look at the balance involved, and my constituency represents some of that balance. Many of the staff who work at Heathrow and for the airlines live in my constituency. In fact, a senior person from British Airways, whose job is neither in lobbying nor public affairs, came to see me yesterday to give his own personal case as to why Heathrow expansion should go ahead. I used to be an admirer of BAA as a company, not least because when I lived in the United States, I saw the appalling condition of US airports in the early 1990s. At that point, Heathrow was comparatively a very good airport in very good condition, but I am afraid to say that those glory days for BAA have long gone. The fading grandeur of Heathrow is apparent, as the same graphics and infrastructure of the early '90s are still there today. I am still an admirer of British Airways as a business and I think it is part of our role in the House to stick up for important British businesses. However, on the proposal to build a third runway at Heathrow, I believe that the case against it is overwhelming. I say that partly due to my own local considerations, but I genuinely believe that the third runway will be detrimental to the UK. Let me first examine the hub argument. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) developed some interesting arguments and a couple of other hon. Members started to consider the hub case. For me, the hub argument does not stack up. I am not convinced that London needs an aviation hub of the same size as that required by Amsterdam or Frankfurt. The hub argument is important, but I believe that it has been overdone in this case. London is itself a destination large enough to provide airport capacity sufficient for almost all the destinations we need. Last week, I flew to Skopje in Macedonia to give a presentation for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Incredibly rarely, Skopje cannot be accessed directly from any of London's five airports. It was most surprising to find how rarely that is the case for a European capital city destination. If we look at the population figures of the various competing hubs that we have heard about, London has population of 8 million, Frankfurt of only 670,000 and Amsterdam of only 750,000. It is quite clear to me that Frankfurt and Amsterdam need to become hubs in order to become viable as international aviation destinations at which people will change planes because there is simply not enough local demand to be able to do that. London is very different. Let us look at the example of the United States. New York City is not a hub airport; neither is Los Angeles; virtually all the US hubs are located in the middle of the continent—in places such as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Houston. The geography of London does not seem to suggest that we should be Europe's largest hub: we are at the edge of the continent. The loss of hub status can, however, be quite traumatic. St. Louis in the 1990s is an interesting example. After TWA was bought by American Airlines, St. Louis lost its hub airport—the famous Lambert Field airport. St. Louis was the home town of Charles Lindberg and has an incredible aviation history. When it lost its airport, it had a significant negative impact on the city's economy in the early to mid-90s, but it is worth remembering that St. Louis has a population of only about 600,000. The disproportionate impact of the loss of the airport on the economy of St. Louis was far greater than the impact that any individual hub airport would have on London. I am not necessarily against London Heathrow being a hub, but we need to get it in perspective, because I think that the hub argument has been overdone. British Airways, however, desperately needs London Heathrow to be a hub. I am not someone speaking in a ““bash British Airways”” mood: as I said earlier, it is important for us to support some of our companies. British Airways employs 43,000 people. I am not sure whether it still is a FTSE 100 company, but it certainly was and may still be so. However, this is not the same argument as saying that it is essential for London to have a hub airport to compete with Frankfurt or Amsterdam. Does a hub provide business? I guess it does, but we have to keep it in perspective. When people change planes, it provides some business; there is a boost to the economy if people stop to eat, shop or just to have a coffee. Again, however, we have to get the balance right between this obsession with the hub airport on the one hand, and the deep economic impact and degradation that it is causing across west London and in areas beyond, including in my constituency. The other argument, which is being put out by the Future Heathrow group, is the supposed loss of Heathrow's status in terms of the number of destinations that it serves. If I am not mistaken, there is a table showing that Heathrow has fallen in that regard from No. 2 in Europe in the 1990s to No. 5 now. That might be a compelling argument, were it not for the fact that, with its five airports, London serves massively more destinations today than it did 15 years ago, when that table was first drawn up. Who would have thought 15 years ago that people could fly to Rzeszów, to Bydgoszcz, and to Bialystok, in Poland? Fifteen years ago, the only Polish destination people could fly to from Heathrow was Warsaw. Now, greater diversity is available, thanks to a much better use of our five airports around London. Some people might say that that change has happened only because of the end of the cold war, but let us look at France. I might be wrong, but I think that some 20 years ago, people could fly only to Paris, Lille and Marseilles from Heathrow. Today, they can fly to an incredible wealth of destinations from London airports. Much of the reason why Heathrow has declined in importance is not a lack of investment or of expansion; rather, it is the relative success of airlines such as easyJet and Ryanair. Let us face it—that is a very important factor that has not been brought out in this debate. So I do not think that a hub should be seen as essential in itself. It is helpful for London to have an important hub airport, but it is not vital. Again, I refer Members to the example of New York city, which seems to cope perfectly well without having a US hub airport. In the brief time available, I want to cover a little of the thinking on the geography of the flight path for the third runway, because this is very important. The Government have said that the eventual package will include an initial cap on additional flights from the new runway at 125,000 in a year, and a Government pledge that any new slots after that point would be ““green slots”” allocated only to airlines that use the newest, least polluting aircraft. I am not sure that that will satisfy anybody in my constituency. The flight path for the third runway takes in north Westminster, north Kensington, Hammersmith, south Acton, north Chiswick and so on. These are all new communities that, although not totally untouched, were largely untouched directly by aircraft noise. They will now be directly impacted on. That is a lot of people living under that flight path. Let us think about the people living under the existing flight paths, as well. The implication is that none of the environmentally friendly aircraft will fly over their heads; instead, people in places such as Fulham, in my constituency, will have the noisiest, most polluting aircraft flying over them. Nobody in my constituency, either in Hammersmith or in Fulham, is going to be satisfied with this solution. Obviously, we welcome the abandonment of proposals on runway alternation, but nobody is going to be satisfied with this. Who is to say that things might not change over time? I think that the Secretary of State gave a commitment earlier that there would be runway alternation on the third runway, but who is to say that that will not alter over time, and that the people of Hammersmith, on whom aircraft noise does not currently impact directly, will not have it right through the day, along with night flights? I am not convinced by the hub argument or by many of the economic arguments. The overwhelming environmental impact on west London, and on my constituents in particular, will be horrendous, and we should vote tonight to throw out the third runway.